Page 29 of A Cruel Kindness

Oh, that fucker was dead.

He hit her way too hard for a friendly spar. He clearly had a thing against the Royals. Now that I thought about it, he’d always been particularly snippy with me.

Cut off his leg. I want it as a trophy. Gimme, the Bond agreed happily. While that seemed like a wonderful idea, I didn’t need to start chopping limbs off yet.

Not until Bellamy asked me to. Preferably with her tauntingly pink lips curved into a smile.

Before I could make my way over, I saw Bellamy lose her composure. It was an interesting thing, watching her underlying spirit break through the carefully crafted mask she always wore. Always poised, always proper, never an inkling of anything other than a cool disposition.

But watching that mask fall as she let her anger break through was … arresting.

My chest squeezed, and I was half sure that my heart stopped.

Bellamy looked fucking beautiful as she stood, taking a few jumping steps to dismiss the pain in her leg. Then, with a wicked smile I would fall asleep thinking about, she launched herself at her opponent.

He went down in seconds, pinned under the weight of her arm across his throat, her knees pining his arms into the floor so he couldn’t move.

He thrashed under her, trying to regain the upper hand, but Bellamy simply kneeled over him with a passive expression. So calm, so beautiful.

Fuck.

And when her eyes rose to find mine, like she was looking for me to congratulate her on a job well done, I almost lost my fucking mind. I walked over to her on brisk legs, swooping her off the pinned soldier and resting her on her feet.

My hands burned from the contact, and I kept them curled into fists by my side.

“Whipped, much?” the dumbass on the floor sneered at me. Yeah, he definitely had a problem with Royals.

“Now, now, I suggest you stay down while you know what’s good for you,” I said with a grin. Bellamy had put him firmly in his place.

The softness I found in Bellamy’s eyes when I turned around was fucking dangerous. She was forgetting her resolve to hate me.

Good. She’d probably get pissed at me for the questions I was about to ask, so it was as good a time as any.

“Coffee, princess?” I asked, giving us both an excuse to leave. The more I stared at that asshole on the floor, the more I was inclined to listen to the Bond and cut off his foot and keep it.

Bellamy managed a short nod, though she looked particularly breathless. Yeah, there would be no touching her right now.

I kept my hand at my side, even though it itched to reach out and take hers. I forced myself to jerk my chin at the door to the training room.

Bellamy turned, sauntering towards the doors with that Edelstenne confidence that was becoming increasingly more difficult to hate. Unfortunately, the Bond had proposed a lovely solution to ridding Bellamy of that horrid last name and her power-hungry family.

Simply replace it with mine.

I snuck a helpless look at her ass as she walked, my eyes trailing back up when she looked over her shoulder at her opponent, a secret smile blooming on her lips.

She liked to prove herself, to subvert what was expected of her. Interesting.

We made our way to the dining hall in silence, passing a fair amount of people who gawked at us like they were shocked we weren’t making out in the hallway.

The stories about paranimas were clearly able to override observation. People didn’t care that the only Soul Match they’d seen in the last three years hated each other. They remembered the stories of the ones who came before.

“He doesn’t like us,” Bellamy quietly observed as we stepped in to the open hall and made our way to the kitchen windows where there was an afternoon supply of coffee, nutrient bars, and—if we were lucky—fruit.

I spied a basket of apples. Lucky day. “No, he doesn’t.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Bellamy said, wisely stepping aside as I made her coffee. Three days into the Bond, and she’d learned quickly that the voice in my head got very, very angry when she tried to serve herself. It was a protective, possessive asshole that was fighting me for control with the fury of a feral animal. “We get a lot of privileges they don’t,” she finished.

“Like?”